How many times have you or someone you know jumped on the bandwagon of investing by getting a stock tip from a friend, co-worker, or some pundit on TV saying a stock was on the up-and-up and you need to get in now and in the process of doing so you end up losing it all? This is a common story and strategy implemented by most inexperienced investors. And is a natural instinct by human beings to prefer since it is much easier to follow social pressures than to do your own research and come up with your own opinion. Sadly, this lazy approach to investing almost never works. And so in the end you only have yourself to blame for being misled, eyes wide open.

Most television personalities, like the ones seen on CNBC, provide their daily stock picks because in most cases they already own them and are now simply giving their biased opinion as a form of legal pump-and-dump strategy so that they personally can make a quick profit for themselves and let the sucker new investors take the hit when they dump the stock at the end of the day. But again, you can’t blame them. It is you who is at fault because you couldn’t resist the thought of making fast, easy cash.

When you take stocks picks from outside sources without first learning more about them and how the market works you fail to understand one of the key rules to stock investing which is that by the time you hear it’s a good pick that pick’s price has already been adjusted to take into consideration the factors that made it a red hot pick in the first place. And so that pick would tend to now either remain stagnant or just as likely to start to decline. This isn’t always the case but it has happened more times than not.

To be a good investor you must learn to take full responsibility of your entire investment decision making. Until then you leave yourself open to easy manipulation and ultimately losing your hard-earned dollars. Investment knowledge is key. The more you know the game the better you can maximize your gains.